


Water Will Hold You

by tin_girl



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Post-Season/Series 03 Finale, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 12:49:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20817554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/pseuds/tin_girl
Summary: “If I were to die,” Armin says, serious now, “I’d want to drown.”Jean tightens his grip on his own piece of bread so as not to drop it – when bread falls, it’s a sin, someone told him once, picking a baguette up and wiping the dust off with a sleeve – and thinks don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t you even dare.They were so stupid once, thinking they had wings.





	Water Will Hold You

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't put any warnings because there's nothing near as drastic in here as canon stuff in this, and the fic is pretty much just about the psychological effects of season three's events.

“If I lost you, I’d have to ask the grass to let me sleep”

~Marvin Bell, To Dorothy

Sometimes, when everyone else is asleep and the sky seems close enough to reach, like something one could cling to and climb as if the world is but a huge circus tent, Jean listens to Armin mumbling in his sleep and wonders if he’s dreaming of the taste of human flesh on his tongue.

Sometimes, when everyone is awake, and the sky seems too far to even dream about reaching it, like something that laughs at them and spits on them as it pleases, Jean watches Armin frown and wonders if he remembers the feel of human skin pressing against the inside of his cheek.

“The ocean, it’s even saltier than I imagined,” Armin tells him once, and Jean thinks of how at night, he bites his lip to blood and keeps himself from waking Armin from his nightmares, because if Armin doesn’t wake, he might not remember them come morning.

Come morning, and Jean wonders how many of those they have left.

Come morning, and he doesn’t know when sunrise became the color of being eaten alive.

“All that water, and you couldn’t ever drink it,” Jean says, and tries not to kill everyone who looks at Armin wrong. How ironic that once he couldn’t kill at all, when now his fingers tighten on the handle of his sword whenever someone hisses something about Erwin, and his blood goes crazy like it’s a feral animal cursed into his veins and not just a worthless splash of red.

Don’t you all know, he wants to yell, that he’s worth a hundred Erwins, a thousand Erwins, a million—

“I wonder what the bottom of the ocean is like, once it gets deep,” Armin says, chewing on a piece of bread, and sometimes he will stop to look down at the crumbs and he will put his palm flat over his mouth as if to prevent himself from throwing up. “Underwater forests, underwater meadows, underwater—”

“Titans,” Jean says, because there’s something about Armin’s eyes – as if he’s not really there, as if, were Jean to lean closer, there’d be water reflected in them and not the room they’re sitting in.

“Underwater titans?” Armin says, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and oh, how far they’ve come that the laughter doesn’t turn into crying.

“You never know,” Jean says, and wonders if Armin’s bones ache, if it’s like an infection, having eaten someone and grown into a monster, ribs stretching like being torn to death.

“If I were to die,” Armin says, serious now, “I’d want to drown.”

Jean tightens his grip on his own piece of bread so as not to drop it – when bread falls, it’s a sin, someone told him once, picking a baguette up and wiping the dust off with a sleeve – and thinks don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t you even dare.

They were so stupid once, thinking they had wings.

“I think that when water takes you, it’s nothing like being eaten,” Armin says, oblivious. “I think it’s like being held.”

And Jean swears and holds onto him, and holds on to him, and holds on to him, exhaling against Armin’s sweaty collar, trying not to sob.

He doesn’t say, I want to die before you, because he thinks it would kill Armin that he wants to die at all.

*

Another nightmare, and Armin’s arm moves the way bird wings snap when a titan tramples the trees. Jean bites his lip until he bites through it, and tastes iron like years ago, when he used to hide coins under his tongue because he thought it was the only place where thieves wouldn’t check.

The name is mangled in Armin’s mouth, like something chewed and coughed back out, but it starts with a ‘b’, and Jean crawls towards him across the floor.

“When you die,” he says, putting his fingers in Armin’s hair, “water will hold you.”

He doesn’t think about how that seems to calm Armin in a way that a promise that he won’t die at all never would.

*

“Have you ever seen a puppet show?” Armin asks him once while they’re cleaning, sponges flying everywhere, too much soap even though no one can afford it, and Connie yelling something through a rag shoved in his mouth.

Jean nods, because those were always common on market squares, a way to make a few extra coins if you couldn’t sing and all the flowers had been picked.

Inside the walls, the flowers get picked faster than they dig graves.

“All those puppets on strings, jumping up and down, up and down, all acrobatics, until the strings tangle and the show is ruined,” Armin says, and he’s smiling, but it’s his scary smile, all mouth corners and no eyes. “And it takes so much time and care to sew the puppets, too, but they always rip easily, seams bursting and sand spilling.”

Jean considers throwing a bar of soap at him just to shut him up.

“They used to fill them up with grain, back when we still had enough of it to spare,” he says instead, and Armin laughs like the end of the world.

“We never had enough of it to spare,” he says, and tilts his head. “But what a lovely thought.”

Later, Jean catches him putting a flake of soap on his tongue, carefully, like it’s an old ritual.

“I hate this body,” Armin explains, and chews. “But then, I always have.”

He gulps water as if he wants the devil’s blood washed out of him, and Jean wants to tell him that he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to this world, but after all the jokes and sarcasm, he thinks honesty like this might kill him, and it won’t be anything like being held at all.

*

“It’s too big on you,” Jean says, and Eren stares at him, confused. “The coat.”

Eren cranes his neck to glance at the wings sewn into the back.

“Maybe I have enough life left to grow into it,” he says, impassive the way he never used to be before, and Jean doesn’t think of how the coat is even bigger on Armin with his scrawny arms and protruding ribs, because he’s not a masochist like the rest of them.

*

“Water cleans,” Armin says like he’ll start praying to it, and Jean catches him rubbing something into a cut with the kind of focus he used to reserve for battle strategy. “So does salt.”

*

Back when Jean was in love with Mikasa, he used to imagine his life as the comfort of filling meals, polished shoes, and good beer in the evenings, but now he knows it’d be like being filled with sand. He’d fall in love with someone else, a sweet city girl whose hands would be smooth in his as she taught him waltz, and somewhere else blood would be spilling like a different kind of ocean, and people he used to share rooms with would scream too far away for him to hear.

Now, he hears, and every time he thinks he’ll go crazy, he tells himself that at least he’s not all sand inside. He catches Armin’s hand and steals a flake of soap off his fingers, praying that when the world ends, it’ll be like falling asleep.

“I just want to taste something other than blood for a change,” Armin says, head down, and Jean doesn’t kiss him, because his lip is still split.

*

The next time Armin has a nightmare, Jean bites his sleeve instead of his lip, and tries to tell him a story about a world where there’s no good and bad, only then, and now, and after.

“There’s so much grain that people put it in pillows, nobody picks flowers, and the bottom of the sea is all grass.”

Armin doesn’t wake, but stops mumbling, and Jean adds wood to the fireplace, even though they’re almost out, because Armin is too thin to be warm and doesn’t sleep under a blanket anyway, like he thinks he doesn’t deserve it. Jean folds his coat over him, even though it must be disrespectful, and thinks that the wings on the back of it are too big, like something Armin’s shoulder blades couldn’t ever support.

Jean hates the world for doing this to them, and holds on to Armin’s sleeve, in case in his calmer dreams Armin’s drowning.

*

Armin throws up, and Jean knows it’s not the first time by how casually he wipes and rinses his mouth.

“Armin,” he says, and his lip is all healed now, and he’s been through so much, but he’s still a coward, because when Armin smiles that bullshit smile at him, Jean doesn’t do anything after all.

*

“I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself—”

“You’re the least hateful thing I’ve ever seen,” Jean says, tugging at Armin’s wrists to drag his hands away from where his fingers are tangled in his hair.

“I wasn’t worth it,” Armin says, and he’s not even whispering, but around them, nobody wakes.

“You were,” Jean says, and wraps himself around him as if becoming a wall has ever done anyone any good. “You _are_.”

“I always want to cough something up, only it never comes out,” Armin says, some sort of fever making him shiver and jerk in Jean’s arms. He laughs, a panicked sound like someone’s being eaten and he can’t do anything, swords broken and strings tangled. “Imagine if I could just spit Bertholdt out—”

Jean folds his palm over Armin’s mouth, and Armin’s lips close over the skin there, absent-minded, as if it’s all instinct.

“Salty,” he whispers, muffled, and melts in Jean’s arms like snowflakes used to melt on his cheeks, back when they were training in the mountains all those years ago. “Like water, Jean.”

Jean smiles into Armin’s hair, and he knows they won’t die drowning, but as long as they’re alive, he’ll think of the sky as something you can spit back on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed and kudos and feedback are very welcome <3


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